Voicemail

[VOIPoTim]

I had set the SMS for new voicemail for my Sprint phone, and it worked great.

The voicemail as attachment works great too.

Still wondering why VMWI has not been turned on though.

All-in-all I have great expectations and confidence in VOIPo and do intend to ultimately abandon Packet8 for VOIPo. The call routing, the Phone Book, the potential of all the call routing, and accommodation of SIP addresses all speak of the far thinking approach VOIPo aspires to.

Thanks for the feedback.

VMWI has been on our list, but just hasn't been implemented yet.

Basically we just need to write something to notify the ATA.


Here's some background. I always like to justify some of my thinking.

Let's take ViaTalk...I mention this just to give a comparison of how it's implemented since I have some knowledge of their infrastructure. They actually use Asterisk servers and everyone "registers" to an Asterisk server. They also use Asterisk for voicemail.

We only use Asterisk for voicemail and no one registers to Asterisk. Since Asterisk has VMWI built in, it's pretty easy to use it because everyone is registered to it. Since we only use it for voicemail, we have two choices... We can either have all our ATAs communicate with Asterisk or we can write something to basically signal the ATA when there is a message in the database.

Since it involves writing something, there were some variables in terms of different ATAs, etc. We also looked at completely doing away with Asterisk for voicemail even because it just does not scale well at all (as some of you may have experienced).

Now that we have those two variables (ATA type and sticking with Asterisk for VM), we can get this in place pretty easily.

I'd look for it very soon.

[usa2k]

OK, I understand delaying because you want to get it right, and you are still considering the right choices/options. It may seem like a glaring one for launch.

It may be wise you have focused on the rest of your platform. That effort includes much innovation.

My occasionally wild imagination:

In my mind, I am still wondering when someone will come up with a hardware SIP answering machine? It would answer with the X-rings time-out, and even send SMS, and emails with attachments elsewhere. It would let you monitor the live message being left.

That would scale as well as the old conventional machine, ...
And have liabilities like running out of recording memory
(unless it handshakes with a network database which would tie it to a service.)

[fisamo]

Now that we have those two variables (ATA type and sticking with Asterisk for VM), we can get this in place pretty easily.

I'd look for it very soon.

I must confess that I'm disappointed that you'll be keeping Asterisk voicemail for the foreseeable future. IMO, that voicemail system is not user-friendly (speaking from the perspective as a former VT customer, not an Asterisk box administrator--VM is completely disabled on my home box). In terms of pre-programmed voicemail packages, I'm very happy with the Octel system we use at work (probably pricey, since it's for commercial systems, but also probably scales well). It's intuitive, reasonably customizable, etc. I think Verizon Wireless also uses the Octel system or a very similar knockoff. (The prompts are the same verbiage, but different voice.) I suspect that there are other off-the-shelf systems out there that are better than Asterisk but not as pricey as the Octel system, as well.

If you don't think Asterisk scales well enough, you might consider upgrading your VM before launching the Residential service. While you could "upgrade" (notice I didn't say 'upgrape' ) voicemail after you've launched, that is much more of a headache.